A woman who has battled anorexia since the age of 10 has been left with the body of an elderly woman.

Helen Gillespie, 30, has never developed breasts, had a boyfriend or moved out of her parents’ home.

As a child she was so frightened of becoming an adult that she dramatically restricted her calorie intake to delay puberty.

But ironically, far from maintaining a
childlike appearance, her eating disorder has turned her body into that of into a frail old woman's - her bones are crumbling and she suffers from varicose veins.

Helen Gillespie (with mother Rachel), 30, has suffered with anorexia for the past 20 years. As a child she dieted because she thought staying thin would keep her young and delay puberty. But her condition has left her with the body of a 70-year-old - her bones are crumbling and she has varicose veins

'Doctors tell me I’ve got the bones of an 70-year-old woman,' said Helen, from Perth, Scotland. 'They’re so weak that I broke my wrist after a fall when I was 14. If I don’t improve, I’ll continue to age prematurely.

'For a long time I’ve looked like a child - but now I feel like an old lady,' she added.

Helen, who weighs six stone, started dieting when she was ten. By the time she was 15 she weighed four-and-a-half stone and was just 24 hours from death.

She spent four months in hospital,
but as soon as she went home she starved herself until she had lost
as much weight as she needed to be readmitted.

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Part of the problem was that Helen felt her parents had very high expectations of her. She strived to meet impossibly high ideals in her music, dance and academic work.

She said: 'It is only recently
that I have realised that it was me, not my parents, who pushed me to do
better and better. I constantly crave praise, love and affection and
was terrified that my every move would be criticised.'

Helen, pictured age 14, was hospitalised for four months when she was 15. She weighed just four and a half stone and doctors said she was close to death. Her repeated hospital stays have meant that she has not been able to pass any GCSEs or A-levels

Helen soon realised that one thing she was good at, was losing weight.

'My
weight was something I could control, and losing weight seemed to be a
talent which other people, particularly other girls, admired,' she said.

She
said: 'My friends were starting to have boyfriends and I felt like a
young child inside. That was very scary and alien to me and I didn’t
feel I could connect with that.

'It comes down to having a huge fear of growing up and a huge fear of relationships, responsibilities and expectations.'

Helen surrounded herself in a child-like world.

She said: 'I lived very much in an imaginary world with my soft toys which I used to take everywhere until I was 11.

Helen reached her heaviest when she was 20, but even then she only weighed nine stone (pictured). She said that her 'huge fear of relationships, responsibilities and expectations' has fuelled her behaviour to stay dangerously thin

Helen is pictured trying first bar of
chocolate age 22. At this point in her life, she weighed a healthier
eight stone but this was short-lived and her weight soon plummeted to
below five stone. She said that she was petrified of growing up and of all the responsibilities that came with adulthood

I
had to force myself to grow up - but it was quite painful because I
wasn’t ready. I would rather have just stayed young and innocent. But
now there’s no chance of that because I know what life is like now.'

Helen’s fear of becoming an adult meant she missed puberty as a teenager, and didn’t have her first period until she was 26.

And tragically, Helen has never developed breasts and has to wear a prosthesis made for patients who have had mastectomies.

Helen has opened up about her battle with anorexia to raise awareness about the devastating condition

She said: 'I never developed properly, so I’ve got a child’s frame - I don’t have hips and I’m completely flat chested.

'But I wear the inserts every day and that’s quite important because it makes me feel like a woman.'

Helen has spent virtually all of the past 20 years in hospital, meaning she has missed out on an education - she has no GCSEs or A-levels.

It is only in the past four months that she has been able to live at home with her parents Rachel Gillespie, 62, who is a retired social worker and Bob Gillespie, a retired teacher, 63.

However she is still unable to bring herself to eat a healthy adult diet and still eats just half the amount of calories a toddler would eat each day.

She said: 'I’m starting to realise that I have a very childlike view of the world. When you’re a small child you think that everything will just come - you’ll be married, have children, a job, a house and a garden.

But I’m starting to realise that actually life is very complicated - and it terrifies me.

'I think on a subconscious level by keeping my body young, I was stopping people having expectations of me.'

Over time Helen has come to realise that she cannot live in the body of a child if she wants to achieve her dreams.

Over the past 20 years she has battled with anorexia, with her weight increasing to a high of nine stone when she was 20, only to fall to the six stone she weighs now.

She said: 'I would love to get married and have children. I go past a bridal shop about three times a week and I look in the window and look at the dresses and think "if only".

'I’ve missed out on my education and my rights of passage like relationships, socialising, friends, work.

I’m sharing my story because I want to warn others that anorexia can take your childhood away.

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in Never-Never Land, and I’m never going to find my way home.

'I do want to get better, but I do wish that I could be a child again and not have all the responsibilities that come with being an adult.